User blog:Lukeatlook/Pyro's Item Overhaul 9 - The Carry Project
What is "Pyro's Item Overhaul"? It's a set of custom patch notes that are meant to enhance and/or fix the problems with itemization in LoL. Previous episodes were a hit or miss, sometimes correctly predicting items implemented by Riot ( , , ), sometimes being far off (...almost everything else). ;What is the scope of the overhaul? Pretty much everything. The idea is to increase diversity in item builds by rebalancing the current items, possibly introducing few new ones when necessary. Keep in mind while assessing this part of the project that more or less all item categories will be affected, so this is far from over. ;Why? TL;DR here would be: To have more than top 3-5 champion picks for every role in LCS with cookie-cutter builds. Item builds should be more reactive, not predefined for a whole class of champions. ;Episodes * The Tank Project * The Support Project * The Carry Project (you are here) * The Fighter Project * The Mage Project (upcoming) * The Jungle Followup (upcoming) * The Peripheral Maps (upcoming) Premise of the Carry Project Rightclicking people to death isn't a particularly complicated task. In most cases, marksmen use their spells to add some extra burst or reposition, sometimes in order to avoid damage. When it comes to dealing damage, however, they're all about using basic attacks to shred their enemies to pieces. And that causes their item builds to go rather stale, since there's only one optimal way to build for glass cannon ADC. The project consists of implementing three main parts: * Critical Strike rework * Armor Penetration rework * DPS Specialization rework Changes to Critical Strike With the removal of dodge, this is the last truly RNG-based element in the game, although the calculations take the previous results into consideration, so the chance isn't truly random. This has been the object of lots of criticism from players, especially since one lucky crit in lane can unfairly turn around a trade. One argument for preserving crit in trades is that without it, AA trades have no variance. When mages fight, there are some skillshot spells casted randomly and it's often a hit or miss scenario, especially when the caster doesn't have vision of the target. Stats like crit chance and dodge give some variance to basic attacks as well. Degree of uncertainity can be good for the game health. It adds a risk assessment factor to some actions - while crit enhances your overall DPS, you can't count on single basic attacks to always strike at a certain level. This adds to the "unsafe" design of carries. If you flash in with 100 AD to finish a 120 HP target, one basic attack is not guaranteed to take down the target, even if you have a chance to critically strike. And please don't tell me that without crit there would be no damage spikes. I'm not gonna believe that you keep track of Statikk Shiv stacks or Caitlyn's passive on the enemy. Here are the changes to Critical Strike: * Critical Strike runes and are removed from the game ** This is to remove "lucky crits" from lane that build up due to the nature of pseudo RNG system. ** Overall critical strike becomes something that you use once you get more than one item. * Critical Strike no longer causes you to deal 200% damage ** Instead, you deal bonus damage equal to your Critical Modifier ** The default modifier is 100% base AD (so without the bonus AD) ** Items can grant you alternative modifiers - only the highest modifier will apply * Different core crit modifiers for different types of carries ** For example, brings crit to the old 200% AD functionality (not 250% as on Live). ** Some other builds are possible, and having more than one item with crit modifier is not a good idea * Overall, though, critical strike oriented builds should be a little bit stronger in tha lategame ** Simple as that - champions building crit are hard carries and are supposed to stomp the lategame as hard as currently Vayne does, paying with the price of weaker early gsme. ** Crit items are all around 30% crit chance to make 100% a possibility, but stacking more than 3 crit items should overload the stat and bring diminishing returns ** Overall, carries are expected to crit more often in late, but for less damage. This way the damage will be a bit more consistent and less spiky. Items with Critical Strike Damage modifiers: * - 150% bonus AD * - 100% armor * - 100% total AD (down from 150% total on Live) * - 50% AP * - 200% base AD Items that work with Critical Strike: , , , , , , , Changes to Armor Penetration New penetration system: * % penetration applies to bonus armor only ** Last Whisper becomes a carry item with Attack Speed and 50% bonus armor penetration ** Other methods for carries to work around armor stacking (crits reduicing armor or dealing damage equal to armor rating, etc.) * Flat penetration can still shred through base armor ** Flat penetration is reworked to be suited better for melee AD casters (rework of Phage and Brutalizer) ** With LW weaker on the likes of Pantheon and Zed, items with flat armor penetration can be buffed without fearing about the overwhelming synergy DPS Specialization Long story short, things like BotRK are supposed to be response items, not core items. Current BotRK costs a lot and is so good in all conditions that it doesn't even matter if the enemy builds health or not, which in return invalidates building health. Changes to Components And again, there are few other DPS items like and that will be covered later. Polls Is the Critical Strike rework acceptable? Yes, it's a step in the right direction No, it's not done right No, crit chance needs to be completely removed Are the changes to armor penetration in place? Yes, this should help the fighter-tank-carry system I don't like some of the changes, but overall the idea is good No, this is not the way to do it Up Next * The Fighter Project - a retelling of the Tank and Carry parts, with a few additions (Atma's Impaler and such) * The Mage Project - taking a close look at items like DFG and trying to put an end to the everlasting war between and . As always, I remind that any sort of feedback, especially the critical one, is helping the project grow. Go on and nitpick :) Category:Custom items